Vll 



to the Royal Maternity Hospital, he successfully performed the 

 Cesarean section on a woman who had just died, and extracted a 

 living child, now grown up to be a father of a family. The case was 

 read by Professor Simpson, at the Medico-Chirurgical Society of 

 Edinburgh, and published in the ' Edinburgh Journal of Medical 

 Science ' for July, 1850. 



After graduating, Dr. George Harley went to Paris, and there 

 began his scientific studies. He entered the laboratory of Messrs. 

 Wurtz and Verdeil, Rue Garanciere, and for a winter worked there, 

 together with the author of the present notice. This laboratory had 

 been opened by Professor Ad. Wurtz, the distinguished chemist. He 

 had rented a spacious apartment on the ground floor of a house, Rue 

 Garanciere, and at great expense and no little trouble, had turned it 

 into a chemical laboratory, most complete in its fittings, where he 

 was then joined by two other chemists, Dr. Verdeil, a Swiss gentle- 

 man, and Monsieur Charles Dollfus Galline, who was part owner of 

 large dyeing works in Alsace, and had made a special study of the 

 chemistry of colouring matters. Wurtz taught chemistry proper, 

 Verdeil chemistry applied to physiology and pathology, and Dollfus 

 chemistry in its application to technology. 



The building enclosed a spacious courtyard, and on the side 

 opposite to the laboratory, Charles Robin, who, with Claude 

 Bernard and Majendie, was at the head of physiological science 

 in France, opened a laboratory of experimental physiology, where 

 a few Englishmen obtained instruction which in some instances 

 matured into high distinction. 



George Harley worked under Verdeil, and they soon became friends. 

 Here he prepared all the constituents of the human body which can 

 be obtained in the crystalline form, such as creatine, creatinine, 

 sarco-lactates, urea, uric acid, hippuric acid, sodium taurocholate 

 and glycocholate, fatty acids, &c. ; he analysed biliary and vesical 

 calculi, and indeed went through a complete course of physiological 

 chemistry, but at that time he was mostly interested with the com- 

 position of urine. 



That there was great activity in the Laboratory Rue Garanciere 

 may be gathered from the circumstance that one of the students 

 wishing to prepare creatine on a large scale, purchased an old horse, 

 and walked the poor dilapidated beast into the laboratory, and it was 

 shot then and there. What little flesh there was on it was cut off as 

 quickly as possible, and submitted to the various operations required 

 for the preparation of creatine ; but little of the substance, how- 

 ever, was obtained. 



Shortly after the author of this notice had left Paris he received 

 from Harley a letter, which contained the following passage (the 

 letter is dated 46, Rue Vaugirard, Paris, 26th June, 1852) : — 



